“As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.”

bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

Ten People Who Helped Shape Science in 2021

An Omicron investigator, a Mars explorer and an AI-ethics pioneer are some of the fascinating people behind the year’s big science stories. One of them is Winnie Byanyima, who left a career in aeronautical engineering to fight injustice in her home country of Uganda and is now leading UNAIDS, the United Nations agency heading the effort to end AIDS around the world. Her role taught her that the equitable distribution of life-saving drugs — such as a vaccine for COVID-19 — wouldn't happen without putting pressure on companies and world leaders. “This idea that you can sell a life-saving health technology the way you sell a luxury handbag is not normal,” says Byanyima, who co-founded the advocacy group the People’s Vaccine Alliance to change that way of thinking.